Round 2: 2008 Cheerleader Auditions Semifinals
By Kristi Scales
Sunday, May 11th It’s Sunday morning, just over 12 hours since leaving Texas Stadium following yesterday’s preliminary round of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders auditions. Today is round 2: Semifinals. Instead of several hundred contestants, we’ll have a total of 147 women compete today. These are the ladies who made it past round 1 yesterday. Fewer than half of the 147 will be invited back for Finals. The competition is now much tougher. The biggest difference between round 1 and round 2: a choreographed dance routine which is followed by kick line (high kicks, like the Radio City Rockettes). Yesterday the girls had two minutes to “freestyle” dance. Today they must perform a choreographed routine which DCC calls a “jazz combo”; it’s a sampling of the style of choreography/dance used by the squad. The contestants only learned the routine this morning, so judges will get a good look at how quickly each girl can grasp a new dance. Judges didn’t have to arrive until 11:30 this morning. The girls have been here since 8am. By 9:30am they were on the Texas Stadium playing field learning the jazz combo and rehearsing the kick line. Two former cheerleaders helped choreographer Judy Trammell instruct the girls. The judges are in the judge’s room waiting for Kelli (DCC Director) to give us final instructions. Yes, the CMT cameras will be rolling. They’ve already been on the field to tape the girls as they learn the jazz combo. Now the production crew is in the judge’s room setting up the shot for Kelli’s meeting with us. The criteria for judging Round 2 is slightly different from yesterday’s preliminary round. We will use our judge’s notebook which has a couple of extra columns on the right hand side. The girls will audition in groups of 5, so that’s’ the same as yesterday. We will write the girls’ numbers on the left hand column, then work our way across the ledger until our final judgment of “yes”, “maybe” or “no”. more >> | 
